Bleeding Texas (2 page)

By the time Bo reached the landing and looked down into the saloon's main room, he could feel the tension that filled the air in the place, along with the familiar smells of sawdust and beer and tobacco smoke.

A big
hombre
with rust-colored hair under his battered, thumbed-back hat stood next to the bar, stiff and obviously angry. His fingers curled as his hand hovered over the butt of the gun holstered on his hip. He was ready to hook and draw.

Bo recognized the redhead, as well as the four cowboys who stood behind him, ready to back his play. He was Pete Hendry, the foreman of the Star C ranch. The other punchers rode for Bo's father, too.

Facing them were half a dozen men, also in dusty range clothes. Some of them looked vaguely familiar to Bo, but he couldn't recall where he had seen them before.

One of those men, a lean gent with a pencil-thin mustache, said with a faintly arrogant smile quirking his lips, “Rein in that temper of yours, Hendry. We didn't come into town looking for trouble, just a friendly drink.”

“You won't find anything friendly here,” Hendry snapped. “There are other saloons in Bear Creek. Go have your drink there.”

“The Southern Belle is the best. We have just as much right to be here as you and those Star C boys do.”

“We won't have you and your Rafter F scum stinkin' up the place,” Hendry responded.

Lauralee had followed Bo to the landing. He sensed her beside him and asked quietly, “Who's the fella with the mustache?”

“His name's Trace Holland,” she said. “He rides for Ned Fontaine.”

Bo nodded slowly. He had already figured out that much from what Hendry had just said.

Ned Fontaine was from back east somewhere. He had come into this part of Texas a while back and bought the old Winthorp ranch from Jim Winthorp's widow. Renaming the spread the Rafter F, Fontaine and his two sons, Nick and Danny, had set out to make it the biggest, most successful ranch in these parts.

That had put them on a collision course with John Creel and the Star C, and the friction between the two outfits had grown steadily worse ever since. A number of brawls had taken place here in Bear Creek when riders from the Creel and Fontaine ranches found themselves in town at the same time, and it looked like Pete Hendry was trying to start another one.

This confrontation had the potential to be worse, though, Bo sensed. As he looked at Trace Holland, he read something in the man's stance and in his eyes that set Holland apart from the other cowboys.

Bo had seen enough gunhawks to know that was what he was looking at now.

Pete Hendry was plenty tough, as well as being a good hand with both cows and men, but he was no gunf ighter. There was a good chance that if he drew, Holland would kill him.

“Get back in your room,” Bo told Lauralee. She didn't need to be out here if lead started flying.

She didn't take kindly to being given orders, though. She said, “This is my place, in case you've forgotten.”

Then she stepped past Bo before he could stop her and started down the stairs.

“If you men are bent on killing each other, do it outside,” she called down to the two groups of cowboys. “Even with sawdust on the floor, it's hard to mop up a bunch of blood.”

Her intervention eased the tension some, but not by much. Hendry still looked like he was ready to slap leather as he said, “I don't mean to cause a ruckus, Miss Lauralee—”

“Then don't,” she interrupted him.

Trace Holland reached up to touch the brim of his hat as he said, “Beg your pardon, Miss Parker. The boys and I just came in for a cold beer on a hot afternoon. We didn't know it was going to cause a problem.”

Bo noticed that Holland used his left hand to make that respectful gesture. The Rafter F man's right hand stayed within easy reach of his gun butt, another indication that he was accustomed to trouble.

Holland was lying, too. Bo knew that he and the men with him must have seen the Star C brand on some of the horses tied at the hitch rail outside the saloon. They had been aware before they ever came in here that they were going to encounter some of John Creel's crew.

Bo had come down the stairs after Lauralee. When he reached the bottom, he said, “Back off, Pete.”

Hendry glanced at him.

“No offense, Bo, but I don't work for you. I ride for your pa and his brand. And I'm not gonna put up with any insults to John Creel or the Star C.”

Holland said, “How did we insult anybody? We just came in for a drink.”

Hendry's face darkened even more with anger as he said, “I heard you sittin' over there at that table and laughin'. I heard you say you weren't gonna have to put up with greasy sack outfits like the Star C for much longer.”

Holland's shoulders rose and fell in an eloquent shrug.

“A man expressing an honest opinion to his friends isn't the same thing as an insult,” he said. “From what I hear, the Star C's lost quite a bit of stock. That sort of thing can't go on forever without hurting a ranch.”

“Damned right it can't. You wouldn't happen to know anything about all that stock we've lost, would you, Holland?”

Hendry had crossed a line with that question, and Bo knew it. So did everybody else in the room. The Star C foreman had practically accused Holland of being a rustler. That was a slap in the face that couldn't be ignored.

Holland stiffened, as if someone had just inserted a ramrod into his back. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Bo stepped between him and Hendry.

“That's enough,” Bo said. “Pete, take the boys and get out of here.”

“I told you, you don't give me orders,” Hendry snapped. “Besides, we were here first. If anybody leaves, it ought to be that bunch.”

“I'm asking you,” Bo said quietly. “There are innocent people in here. It's no place for a gunfight.”

Hendry glared at him for a moment, then blew out an exasperated breath and muttered a curse.

“I'm doin' this as a favor to you, because I respect your old man so much,” he said. “But don't try to make a habit of bossin' us around, Bo.” He looked at the other Star C cowboys and jerked his head toward the batwings. “Come on. I need some fresh air anyway.”

The last was said with a meaningful glower at Holland and the other Rafter F men.

With obvious reluctance, Hendry started for the door and the other men followed him. Unfortunately, their route took them fairly close to the Rafter F punchers, who moved aside a little to give them room. Bo didn't care for the two bunches being that close together, but he sort of held his breath and hoped that it would be all right.

Another few seconds would tell the story . . .

One of the Fontaine men laughed and said with a sneer, “I knew they'd turn tail and run, first chance they got.”

That was the wrong thing to say, and Bo knew that as soon as he heard it.

With a furious roar, Pete Hendry whirled around and charged at the man, lowering his head like a maddened bull. He tackled the Rafter F puncher around the waist and drove him backward off his feet.

Both men came crashing down on a table where several townies had been playing poker earlier, before the trouble started. The game had been suspended while the players watched the confrontation nervously.

Now they scurried out of their chairs as Hendry and the other man landed on the table, scattering cards and money. The table legs broke under the impact with sharp cracks, and the table collapsed. Hendry and his opponent were dumped on the floor amidst the debris.

That didn't put a stop to the fight. Hendry started slugging at the Rafter F man, who had been stunned enough that he had to take a couple of blows before he regained his senses enough to fight back.

Then he began throwing punches of his own. One of them tagged Hendry on the jaw and knocked him to the side.

Bo didn't see what happened in the initial battle after that because the men from the Star C and the Rafter F had come together like two waves crashing against each other, blocking his view of Hendry and the other man. Fists flew as the brawl was on.

“Stop it, you idiots!” Lauralee shouted at them, but no one paid any attention to her.

A chair thrown by one of the combatants sailed through the air toward him. Bo grabbed her around her trim waist and swung her out of the way. The chair went over the bar and smashed into an array of whiskey bottles on the back shelf.

Bo still had his arms around her from the rescue, and Lauralee didn't seem to be in any hurry to squirm free. Instead she looked up at him, said, “Oh!” and seemed to get even closer.

Bo leaned over, taking her with him. But it was only to get them out of the way of a man who was stumbling backward after being walloped in the face. The fella hit the bar, bounced off of it, and fell facedown on the floor.

“Run and get Jonas Haltom,” Bo told Lauralee, referring to Bear Creek's marshal. He pushed her toward the entrance. “I'll try to talk some sense into their heads.”

“That's not going to do any good, and you know it,” she said. “There's a shotgun behind the bar—”

Another out-of-control battler reeled against her. His hand went out as he tried to catch his balance.

Instead he caught the neckline of Lauralee's new dress, which ripped right down the front, ruining the dress and exposing some of her feminine charms in a thin shift.

Lauralee hadn't grown up in a saloon for nothing. She cussed like a muleskinner, clubbed both hands together, and swung them into the man's face in a resounding blow that sent him flying away from her. Then she looked down at the wreckage of her dress, uttered another curse, and grabbed a broken chair leg to use as a club.

Bo knew she was ready to wade right into the melee, and while he admired her feistiness, he knew she might get hurt.

He grabbed her around the waist again, this time from behind, and lifted her off her feet as he swung her around toward the bar. She kept yelling as he lifted her across the hardwood and shoved her into the arms of a startled, wide-eyed bartender.

“Hang on to her, Roscoe!” Bo told the man. “Get down behind the bar!”

Since Lauralee hadn't gone to fetch the marshal, Bo would just have to try to keep her safe here in the saloon. Jonas Haltom would probably show up pretty soon anyway. Some of the townspeople who had scattered out of the Southern Belle when the fight started ought to report it to him.

In the meantime, Bo would try to settle things down. He held out both hands and started across the saloon, raising his voice to say, “Stop it! Stop this, you men!”

One of Fontaine's men lunged at him from the side, yelled, “Go to hell!” and punched him in the jaw.

Bo Creel was a peaceable man. Always had been.

But he had his limits, and he had reached them.

As the cowboy swung at him again, Bo blocked the punch with his left forearm and buried his right fist in the man's belly. The Fontaine rider started to double over. Bo crossed with his left and caught him on the chin. The punch drove the man's head to the side and made his eyes roll up in their sockets.

Somebody else landed on Bo's back and made him stumble forward as he hammered at Bo's head. Bo reached back, caught hold of the man's hair, and hauled forward on it. The
hombre
screeched in pain and turned loose, tumbling to the floor.

He swung a leg and caught Bo in the back of the knees with it. Bo went down and landed in the sawdust. His opponent leaped at him, but Bo got his right leg up in time to plant his foot in the man's belly. He caught hold of the man's shirt, straightened his leg, and levered the fella up and over. The Fontaine man yelled as he flew through the air, a yell that was cut short as he slammed down on a table.

That one broke, too.

Bo rolled over, got his hands and knees under him, and came halfway up from the floor.

He stopped short because he found himself looking at Trace Holland a few feet away. The gunman's face twisted in a snarl, and his Colt snaked free of its holster. As the gun started up, Bo knew he couldn't draw fast enough from this awkward position to beat Holland's shot.

He was about to die here, kneeling in sawdust, blood, and spilled beer and whiskey.

The first thing Scratch saw when he reached the saloon and slapped the batwings aside was Bo about to get shot.

Scratch reacted instantly. He didn't know who the
hombre
was who was about to ventilate his old friend, but that didn't matter.

One of Scratch's long-barreled Remington revolvers came out of its holster with blinding speed. The roar as it went off blended with the other man's shot, both reports coming so close together they sounded like one.

Scratch's shot was just a fraction of a second quicker. That shaved heartbeat of time was enough to save Bo's life. Scratch's bullet clipped the gunman's arm and knocked his aim off so that the slug from his gun smacked harmlessly into the bar. It all happened too quickly for the eye to follow.

The man's gun hand spasmed open. The Colt slipped from his fingers and thudded to the floor.

Bo scooped it up, came to his feet, and backed away as he covered the man who'd tried to kill him. He glanced at Scratch, and as their eyes met, he gave the tiniest of nods.

That was thanks and acknowledgment enough for two
hombres
who had backed each other's play for more than thirty years.

The double roar of gunf ire had thrown the brakes on the ruckus. With a tendril of smoke still curling from the barrel of his Remington, Scratch looked around at the wreckage, the sprawled bodies of brawlers who'd been knocked unconscious, and the men still on their feet who had their fists cocked for punches unthrown. Some of them he recognized as men who rode for the Star C.

That meant the fellas on the other side of the fight were probably Fontaine men.

Since he and Bo had come back to Bear Creek, Scratch had been staying with his sister Dorothy and her husband, Eben, on their farm a few miles outside of town. But he had visited the Star C often enough and spent enough time with Bo to be well aware of the ongoing trouble between the two ranches. The feud was a range war in the making, and clashes like this one just aggravated the situation.

“You all right, Bo?” Scratch asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Bo replied. He was disheveled and his clothes were stained and dirty from rolling around on the floor, but he didn't seem to be wounded.

Lauralee Parker popped up from behind the bar. Her dress was torn and hanging open rather immodestly, Scratch couldn't help but notice. She should have been trying to hold it closed, but her hands were too busy waving a shotgun around.

“Get out of my way, Bo!” she yelled. “We'll see how fast a little buckshot clears the room.”

Bo reached over the bar, took hold of the shotgun's twin barrels, and pointed them toward the ceiling.

“Stop that,” he said. “You set off that Greener in here and you'll puncture some innocent hides, likely including my own.”

Scratch drew his left-hand Remington and waved both guns at the men who'd been battling.

“You fellas break it up,” he ordered. “You boys from the Star C move over there.”

He pointed to one side with a gun barrel.

Pete Hendry stepped forward. His jaw was thrust out in stubborn defiance.

“I already told Bo we don't work for him, and that goes double for you, Morton!”

The batwings creaked a little as they opened behind Scratch. A new voice demanded, “How about me, Hendry? You gonna mouth off at me?”

Marshal Jonas Haltom strode past Scratch. Like Lauralee, the lawman had a shotgun in his hands. He was a big, barrel-chested man with a gruff demeanor and not much tolerance for troublemaking cowboys.

Haltom poked the shotgun at the group of brawlers and went on, “You heard the man. Break it up. I want Star C on one side of the room and Rafter F on the other.”

The man Scratch had shot said, “I need a doctor, Marshal.” He clutched his wounded arm with his other hand. Blood had run down the arm to drip off his fingers.

“I can see that, Holland. I also see your holster's empty. Drew on somebody, did you?”

Sullenly, the man didn't answer. His eyes shot daggers of hate toward Bo and Scratch, though.

Since Haltom had things under control, Scratch holstered both of his ivory-handled guns and moved over to Bo's side. Bo had let go of Lauralee's shotgun. She placed the weapon on the bar and angrily pulled together the ruined dress so that it covered her more decently.

Once the two groups of cowboys had separated from each other, Haltom drifted closer to the bar and said, “I suppose this was the usual hell-raising between those bunches, Lauralee?”

“That's right, Marshal,” she said.

“Which side started it this time?” Haltom asked, then shook his head and stopped her before she could answer. “I don't suppose it matters, does it? There's no fight unless both sides go at it.”

“From what I saw, they were about equally to blame,” Bo said.

Pete Hendry glowered at him and said, “I'll remember you said that, Bo. I'll be sure and tell your pa and your brothers how you stuck up for the Fontaines, too!”

“I'm not sticking up for either side, and you know it, Pete.”

“Tell me you'd'a done something different if some varmints started bad-mouthin' the brand you rode for!”

Bo didn't say anything, and for good reason, Scratch knew. During their wanderings, they had found themselves in more than one ruckus just like this one, fighting on behalf of the spread where they'd been working at the moment.

“I suppose the important question,” Haltom said, “is whether or not you want them locked up, Lauralee.”

She still looked furious, but she relented a little as she said, “I don't care so much about that. I want them to pay for the damages, though.” She looked around at the broken tables and chairs and the shattered whiskey bottles. “It's not going to be cheap.”

“You figure it up, and they can pass the hat,” Haltom told her.

“I can't very well do any ciphering while I'm holding my clothes on!”

“You can go change,” Haltom said with a shrug. “We'll be glad to wait.” He glared at the two groups of cowboys. “Isn't that right?”

“What about this arm of mine?” Holland asked.

“You haven't bled to death yet. I think you can wait for a few more minutes. Now, all of you sit down.”

They sat, both sides looking like they wanted to murder the other and Marshal Haltom, in no particular order.

Haltom sat down at one of the undamaged tables and rested the shotgun on it, with the double barrels aimed roughly halfway between the two factions. He motioned Bo and Scratch into a couple of other chairs at the table.

“When I heard that all hell was breaking loose in the Southern Belle, somehow I figured I'd find the two of you right in the middle of it,” he said.

“To be fair, Marshal, we didn't have anything to do with starting this one,” Bo said. “In fact, I did my best to break it up before it really got started.”

“And I only pulled that old smokepole of mine because Bo was about to get ventilated,” Scratch added. “Who is that
hombre
I nicked, anyway?”

“His name's Trace Holland, according to Lauralee,” Bo replied. “Works for the Fontaines now.”

“That's right,” Haltom confirmed. “He's got a reputation as a gunslick. Was mixed up in some shootings in San Antonio and Sweetwater. If he threw down on you, Creel, you're probably lucky to be alive.”

“I know I am,” Bo said. “Scratch deserves the credit for that.”

Haltom grunted and said, “Pretty fancy shooting, creasing him on the arm like that.”

“Naw, I hurried my shot,” Scratch said with a grin. “I figured on blowin' his lights out.”

“Good thing you didn't.”

Scratch nodded solemnly and said, “I know. If I had, I'd've had to ride all the way back into town for the inquest. Never did care much for court proceedin's. They give me the fantods.”

Haltom just snorted disgustedly and said to the bartender, “Roscoe, bring some beers over here.”

Lauralee came back downstairs a few minutes later, dressed in a gray gown that wasn't nearly as fancy as the ruined blue one had been. She had a piece of paper in her hand that she gave to the marshal as she told him, “That ought to cover the damages.”

Haltom nodded and stood up, cradling the shotgun under his left arm.

“You've got two hundred dollars to come up with, boys,” he told the crews from the Star C and Rafter F. “Dig in those pockets and do it now.”

Once the money had been collected—with a considerable amount of glaring and muttered cussing along the way—Haltom turned the cash over to Lauralee and then told the cowboys, “Get your horses and get out of town. I don't want to see any of you in Bear Creek for the next three or four days.”

“That ain't right, Marshal,” Pete Hendry protested. “We've got a right to come to town.”

“And by all rights, I ought to haul the whole lot of you in front of Judge Buchanan and ask him to sentence you to a week in jail for disturbing the peace,” Haltom snapped. “You still want to argue about it?”

Hendry didn't. He and all the others shuffled out, Star C going first, then Rafter F after the hoofbeats of the Creel riders had faded.

“Lauralee, I'm sure sorry about what happened,” Bo said. “I'll ask my pa to have a talk with Pete and the other boys. They have to understand that this trouble can't go on.”

“You know as well as I do that Holland and those other men from the Rafter F got just what they were looking for when they came in here,” Lauralee said. “They wanted to start a brawl.”

“She's right,” Haltom put in. “Your pa has a tough, salty crew, no doubt about that, Bo, but they're basically honest cowboys. A lot of Fontaine's men—like that fella Holland—well, they've heard the owl hooting on many a dark trail, I'd say.”

“It's only a matter of time until somebody gets killed,” Lauralee said.

Scratch nodded toward his old friend and said, “That came mighty near to bein' Bo just now.” His eyes narrowed. “You think maybe that was the reason behind all of it? The fight might've been just an excuse for Bo to get shot durin' the commotion.”

“I don't think that was it,” Bo said. “It looked more to me like Holland's temper just got away from him.”

“Maybe so,” Haltom said, “but it might not be a bad idea for the two of you to grow an extra pair of eyes in the back of your heads.” Haltom got heavily to his feet. “Never can tell when somebody might try to shoot you from that direction.”